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Economy of Games

Cash Per Minute - The Economy of Games

There are a number of posts on this and other forums where people ask which games pay the most money. Most of the answers are anecdotal, where people say that they earn a lot of cash quickly on a certain game - but most don't provide a useful comparison.

So, I took a somewhat scientific approach - or at least documented my scores.

When I first started doing this (and there are some other posts on this forum that have my preliminary results), I played 2 or 3 games, and then figured out the average cost per minute from those games. The problem with that was that my skills biased the results in some of the games to a large degree. For example, of the entire course of an operation gumball game, I can get over 100,000 points - half of those points come in the last 10 levels with the other half in the first 20 levels. If I just averaged my first 20 levels, the average wouldn't be as high.

So, I started thinking that I should document how much cash you can win in the first minute of game play, the first five minutes of game play, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and an entire game. Most of the games take at least 5 minutes to play, but there are a few that can be played much quicker (Wacky Zingoz, for example, only takes about a minute to play). So, in the case of games that I cannot make last 5 minutes, I played several times in a row to give an adequate comparison.

Also, most games are time based, but some of them are not. Games like Cash Cow 2, Candy Bash, Wacky Zingoz, Go-Go Googles and even Tile Towers - which is time based, but there is plenty of time - could take a lot longer than I took. For the most part, I played the games as fast as I could. Normally, when I play Zingoz Pop or Zacky's Quest, I take longer, because I try to get more points (which shows with my listing on the overall high score list), but in the game that I documented for Zingoz Pop, I finished the game in 37 minutes - compared to my normal 45 minutes. Go-Go Googles normally takes me a lot longer to play also because I am trying to collect letters to spell Googles. Even on the games I played for this test, I suppose I could have even done it quicker, but I did try to spell Googles a few times.

Finally, your results may vary. I am a very good game player, so most of these results are probably higher than most of you will score. In some cases, though, there are games I just don't play very often, and I am sure that there are people who can do better than me. So, use these results however you wish. For the most part, I just hope people will be able to see a good comparison of games, and will point other people to this list, and will then look at documenting their totals.

OK. For the tests. For each of these trials, I did them at least twice to confirm that the results were typical. I used a stopwatch program to track the time, recording the results in an excel spreadsheet.

Game

1 min

5 min

10 min

15 min

>20 min

Ant Mania

10

10

-

-

-

Bananza

2

5

-

-

-

Bounce N Burst

9

12

15

15

-

Candy Bash

7

5

5

5

5

Candy Bash 2

6

8

12

-

-

Cash Cow

5

6

-

-

-

Cash Cow 2

4

4

4

-

-

Color Storm

3

9

-

-

-

Dex Dangerous

5

6

-

-

-

Go Go Googles

4

5

-

-

-

Goober's Lab

2

5

6

7

7

Hide N Skunk

2

4

-

-

-

Hungry Hog

5

9

10

11

13

Jazz Monsters

6

10

-

-

-

Lilly Padz

11

13

-

-

-

Lunch Letters

7

9

-

-

-

Mini Golf

9

7

8

-

-

Op Gumball

13

11

13

19

20

Picnic

12

12

-

-

-

Polar Plunge

9

9

-

-

-

Pumpkin Patch

4

7

8

-

-

Stack Em Up

6

7

-

-

-

Tile Towers

5

4

-

-

-

Tulip Trouble

2

5

6

-

-

BullsEye Batter

8

7

-

-

-

Wacky Zingoz

8

8

-

-

-

Where's Wacky

7

7

-

-

-

Zacky's Quest

12

13

13

14

17

Zingoz Pie Throw

2

5

-

-

-

Zingoz Bounce

6

5

6

-

-

Zingoz Pop

19

14

13

14

14

Here is an example of how to read this. After 1 minute of game play, I had earned 19 kc on Zingoz Pop. After 5 minutes, I earned 70 kc - which is 14 per minute. By the 20th minute, I had earned 280, which is 14 per minute. So, depending on your skill level, you can determine which game to play.

The first minute might have a bit of bias against instructions. Tulip Trouble takes 20 seconds to start up - but it does that every time, so it had to be recorded.

Some games surprised me. I thought Goober's lab would pay out more. I also was shocked at how little Cash Cow 2 and Hide N Skunk payed. On the other hand, I never would have guessed Lilly Padz would pay so much.

So, you will notice that there are some games missing here. I chose to not do the tournament games where you can play against another player (or even the computer), because there are a lot of variables that I didn't want to consider. I have seen some people say that checkers or air hockey can return a lot of money - but my trials did not show that (and if you lose a game, you really cut into your averages). Also, I did not consider the fact that you can cheat at some of the multi-player games if you have a cooperative friend. I consider those cheating and outside the spirit of the game.

I also didn't put in Quizzys or Quizzys Whizkinz because they rely on correct question answering. In my earlier research, though, I did find that you can win around 25 - 28 kc per minute.

And, the one arcade game that I left out was Quizzy's Word Challenge. You can earn a lot of kinz cash on this game, but it has no time limit and can take a very long time if you are trying to get the most cash. Perhaps in the future, I will try to play this game as quickly as possible, and will also play to get the most money (take the time to figure out the best words).

I do want to add that you can greatly improve your cash per minute if you play in the tournaments - especially for the games that do not take as long. In some games, you can add 50 kc to the total, which will jump the total up. For instance, it takes me 4 minutes to complete a polar plunge run, and I get 38 kc (9.5 per minute), but when I play in the 25 player tournament, I get an extra 50, so that game now yielded 88 kc in 4 minutes, which is 22 per minute.

Plus, if you can win trophies, you can either sell them in the W Shop and boost your cash per minute, or trade them and get more out of the game. Although I can only make 9.5 kc per minute on polar plunge, I win lots of trophies, and have stocked our rooms with exclusives in trade, so it is worth much more to me than a game like Lilly Padz.

Finally, none of this takes into account how much fun you have playing the game. Even though Wacky Zingoz earns more than Cash Cow 2, it would be much more fun to play Cash Cow 2 for an hour, compared to playing Wacky Zingoz around 75 times. So, just use this for reference, but enjoy playing.